Centered
by Shaposhit
Summary: Anna and Hans are a pairs skating team about to finally make it onto the national scene. But Anna's reclusive sister Elsa uncovers a secret about their coach and accidentally reveals a secret of her own. With her relationship with her sister and her skating partner up in the air, Anna's world is suddenly resting on thin ice. Multi-ship (including incest), modern AU with powers.
1. 1: In which Anna has a stroke of luck

"He's supposed to be here today," said Anna in an awed whisper, eager eyes roaming the familiar parking lot as their beat-up VW Beetle pulled into one of the numerous empty spots. The sun only barely peeked out from under the cover of the tall pines that encircled Arendelle Ice Rink. "Elsa, we're actually going to meet a celebrity!"

"He's not a celebrity," the older sister muttered tersely, clenching her hands against the wheel. She drove with the utmost care, whether in summer or winter, whether the roads were bedecked in ice or as benign and black as a baby Labrador.

"He _is! _What do you know?_" _insisted Anna. She pulled her royal purple jacket tight around her neck when her sister killed the gas and the interior of the car seemed to drop ten degrees instantly. "He was in the _Olympics! _Probably millions of people have seen him on TV."

"And now," Elsa said tiredly as she hoisted a pair of white ice skates across one shoulder. "He's _here." _That said it all. The pair looked around at the desolate landscape. Arendelle was a medium-sized town perched atop the fjords, notable mainly for its extreme lack of anything notable. The cliffs and icy-blue water ought to have made the place hauntingly beautiful, but mostly they just reminded its inhabitants of all the young men and women who had jumped to their deaths when the backbone of the town had broken.

Arendelle had once been a welcoming and bustling community until the slow demise of the local fishing industry that had begun thirty years prior. Overfishing, apparently. Or pollution from factories upstream. Whatever the cause, now the rows and rows of cheery seaside houses were just empty shacks that smelled like old fish. Finally, when Anna was twelve and Elsa fifteen, the marginal yields of tiny creatures were deemed unworthy of the trouble, and the corporation closed its operations in Arendelle.

That was where their mother went. She journeyed south, to warmer waters with more colorful and plentiful yields, to earn and send back enough so that the girls could live comfortably. But it was raining heavily on that late spring day, and the other driver was wearing glasses with an out-of-date prescription.

A few months later, their father went, too, of grief.

Arendelle was no longer a place one went intentionally, not for a holiday, no longer a quaint seaside village bedecked with fudge shops and friendly old women with their hair tied up in scarves. It was a place one might _end up._

So, why, then, was Anders Christiansen gracing the little hellhole with his presence? Sure, he had only been a minor prospect in a sport their nation was not known for, and hadn't even come close to the medals, but he was an _Olympian._

Elsa was not excited by the prospect of meeting him. Then again, Elsa was not excited by much.

Anna, however, was about to pee her pants.

The rink was almost as dark as outdoors when they entered; a few wan-looking strips of fluorescent lighting flickered above the invitingly smooth expanse of freshly-resurfaced ice. No matter how many times Anna came here, the sight of cold steam rising off the rink in the early morning never failed to make her breath catch in her mouth.

Her sister was unmoved, bearing her customary scowl as the girls slipped past the unmanned admissions desk. They would pay later – maybe. At this point, they were probably half of the rink's business, so Mr. Oaken never harassed them too much about on-the-house ice time.

"Look, he's already here," whispered Anna, pointing a gloved hand at the figure leaning against the box on the far side of the ice. Anna was an effusive young woman, prone to physical displays of affection, but she tamped down her natural instinct to grab her sister's arm in excitement; it was well known to everyone in the family that Elsa did not like being touched.

The younger sister practically threw on her skates, forced to re-do the laces when she missed one hook in her haste. She dashed onto the ice and glided across to the Olympian (_Olympian! _she thought with glee) blearily sipping his coffee.

"You must be Anna," he said, wiping sleep from his eyes. She beamed. "I remember your email."

Anna giggled nervously, now remembering that self-same email full of extremely unprofessional gushing. "Oh, um, sorry about all the –"

"It's fine." Anders held up a hand to stop her. "But I really was never a big deal. There's no need to get excited over me. Where's -?" He looked about the ice, confused. Across the diameter Elsa was stepping carefully out onto the surface, dressed simply in black leggings and a tight-fitting cornflower blue T-shirt. Like many skaters, she wore mittens to protect her hands from the chill in the air and the possibility of cutting her fingers on her blades of her skates; hers were navy, woven through with threads of silver. Anna had forgotten her own pair of mittens that day, as she frequently did; her elder sister _never _forgot.

Elsa began taking long, plunging strides to skate around the perimeter of the rink with a rhythmic _swish. _The cut of her leggings, which looped over the boot of her skates, accentuated her long legs. Anders's eyes followed her for a long moment before he said, "That's not – who's –"

Anna was used to the way the blonde girl made men stumble over their words; the way they ignored her in comparison barely even hurt anymore. "Oh, that's just my sister," she said. "My partner will be here in a minute." Inwardly she sent angry thoughts in the direction of her tardy friend. He was late every morning, but this morning _mattered._

Thankfully, her inner prayers (or damnations, perhaps) seemed to have worked. Only a minute later, as Anna was warming up, a third pair of humming blades on ice joined the first two.

"Hey, gorgeous," said Hans, gliding past Anna with a wink, his hand flickering through her auburn ponytail. Her cheeks went pink.

By the coach's box where Anders stood, Anna skidded to a stop and introduced the two men. "We've been skating together for five years, on-and-off," she explained. "But we haven't had a proper pairs coach since…well…"

"Since old Madame Pontillier decided the ashram was the place for her," concluded Hans with a smirk, ruffling his thick brown hair with a white-gloved hand. His eyes caught Anders's for just a moment too long. Somewhat stiffly, Hans took a long and audible inhale before suggesting, "Shall we show Mr. Coach Guy what we can do, Anna?"

"Mr. Potential Coach Guy to you, Hans," said Anders, a twinkle in his eye. "I haven't decided on anything permanent yet."

"Oh, we'll convince you!" cried Anna. She spun into Hans's arms and they were off.

They were energetic, but not well-contained; though neither skater had any particular quantity of grace, by virtue of their years together they coordinated automatically and seamlessly. Their lifts were sporadically cut short by a wavering of Hans's wrists or Anna's balance, but the expression of pure joy on the girl's face was genuine. Hans had an air of unshakeable confidence about him, even when he made mistakes.

The patterns of their lifts and synchronized jumps stretched into the farthest corners of the rink, and they traveled across it with such speed that Elsa was relegated to leaning against a wall, as well out of Anders's sightline as possible, until their program was finished. Then she resumed her slow, methodical practice of clean jumps and tight spins, all performed with her face set as if in a trance. It was impossible to speak to her while on the ice. In fact, it was nigh well impossible to speak to her at any time for more than a few sentences.

Elsa practically lived in her second-story bedroom, piled high with books and folders and maps, and came out only to attend school as often as she was required to, and to skate several times a week. Their grandparents did not make a fuss about it since her grades were excellent. Anna, however, could not help but worry. Not only did her older sister seem to be sleepwalking throughout her skating, but almost all the time Elsa bore a cardboard expression and moved about her tiny life with a heart-breaking reluctance.

It had not always been like that, Anna remembered. Elsa was always quieter and shier than her younger sister, but as a child she had been Anna's closest friend. Forever branded into Anna's memory was the megawatt smile her sister used to display whenever Anna persuaded her to skip chores in favor of playing in the woods. They used to spend all their time together – catching small creatures in the summer, playing in leaves in the fall, skating and sledding in the winter. All year long they chased each other, laughing, up and down trees, inside logs, through the house – anywhere their tiny feet could take them.

Thinking about it made Anna _hurt. _Elsa barely spoke anymore, certainly not to her sister. She could no longer remember how Elsa's laugh sounded, having gone without hearing it for years.

It was like going without dinner every night. At first the silence hurt like a stab wound, visceral and bodily. Then Anna got used to it; but always there was the dull ache of neglect in her chest, always hanging in the back of her mind hopeful, nostalgic thoughts of _what had once been _and _what could someday be _mixed together in a potent but addictive elixir_._

But at least Elsa still came to the rink with her; Anna had put off learning how to drive for fear that once she could transport herself, Elsa would stop accompanying her. Sometimes they might talk a little in the car. And Anna got to watch her sister skate.

Elsa was a beautiful skater. Of course. Every goddamn thing she did was beautiful. Her spins centered beautifully, her footwork was light and almost noiseless, and her jumps were clean and tight. Technically, she was impeccable. But she lacked some quality of life to her work, lacked the fire that made the best skaters truly the best, lacked the simultaneous pain and sweetness that should have flowed through her every movement. And so, while nothing was _wrong _with the way she skated, nothing was particularly _right, _either. She never really looked like she wanted to be on the ice.

She was scored fairly well in competitions (often taking third or fourth) where it was easier for judges to take off points for visible errors than for something as transient as _I just don't really feel it. _

Anna was the opposite. She had emotion aplenty while her technique could be erratic; she threw herself into the music and the moves, and frequently found herself crying after a performance when the emotion simply poured out. She and Hans mostly placed in the middle of the standings; Anna suspected that her nerves and clumsiness were holding the pair back. But Hans disavowed her theory whenever she so much as hinted at it.

When Hans and Anna struck their final pose, Anna's foot bobbling a little out of fatigue, the rink went silent with the end of their music. Anna rose to the surface of her trance of concentration, and became once again conscious of the darkness, the early hour, and her nerves with respect to their potential and very accomplished coach.

Anders did not clap, but slid out onto the ice, revealing a pair of worn black skates with silver trim. "Not bad," he said, rubbing a hand thoughtfully along his slightly-stubbly jaw. Beside her, Anna felt Hans's arm clench in anticipation of the Olympian's edict. "I like the energy. And you two work very well together."

Anna beamed, turn to look up eagerly at her skating partner. Always the more measured of the two, his face was unreadable. Much of the time Anna could not figure out how he felt, since he was without fail polite and agreeable and full of positivity. She never knew if he was nervous before a competition, how he felt about their successes and failures, how he felt about _her._

Because, you see, he had these _sideburns. _And a strong jaw, and glinting green eyes. And a muscular chest – a muscular chest against which Anna was pressed several times a day during their practices. What was a girl to do?

"Not bad, but," Anders continued, shifting his weight and crossing his arms. Hans twitched again in anticipation. "You cut all your lifts short. Hans, you're a big guy, you should have the strength to hold them. Anna, you need to engage – don't be dead weight. Maybe it's a confidence issue, I don't know. We'll work on it."

In spite of the criticism, Anna felt her face split into a grin. He had said _We'll work on it. _As in, together. As in, they had a real coach.

"Your footwork is okay, but both of you have a tendency to lean forward on your toe-picks, especially Anna. I can hear the scratching from clear over here. Jumps – Hans, you're far behind Anna here. I think you need some extra work to catch up."

"Do I?" asked Hans quietly. Perhaps he was insulted, perhaps disappointed, perhaps just motivated to improve – his voice was full of tension but did not give anything away.

"Yeah, I can teach you separately if you want."

Hans met their coach's eyes, something like a challenge burning in them. "Sure," he agreed.

Anna's eyes flickered between her partner's and her coach's, trying desperately to read the tension between them. Hans had a temper, she knew, though he had never been rough with her. He was too gentlemanly to intimidate or, God forbid, physically hurt a woman. But there were rumors at school; rumors that once Hans had been pulled out of class and nearly suspended for arranging to fight a boy on the soccer team who had cast aspersions up on his sexual preferences. These assumptions and comments were part of the burden of being a male figure skater, but Hans went after his detractors with a heart set on retribution. Only Hans's charm and way with words saved him from punishment at the hands of the school authorities.

Her partner did not take criticism well. It took a certain type of straightforward yet gentle hand to guide him, and Anna began to fear that this Godsend that was Anders Christiansen did not have the requisite dexterity to manage Hans. But still her heart beat quickly with the thought that this could be _it, _this could be the day that, with this Olympian at the rink, their luck could finally turn around and she and Hans could at long last make the leap from _okay _to _really good. _Both she and her partner skated harder, with that extra ounce of spirit, with Anders's knowledgeable eyes on them.

Their morning practice was cut short by the arrival of the hockey team in matching black-and-maroon jerseys, announced by the rhythmic yet disorganized clanging of hockey sticks skidding against the ground in the boys' strong and careless hands. Like a conquering army they approached in synchronized masculine strides, driving the handful of figure skaters off of the ice.

"This wasn't on the rink schedule," Anna muttered, annoyed, as she began to undo her laces. "We only got an hour. I didn't even get to my reverse spins."

"I think they have a game this Sunday," explained Hans amiably, though his eyes followed the entrance of the team with hawkish sharpness.

Given that the rink's hours only overlapped with Anna's and Hans's availability for certain periods of time every week, there was a chronic animosity between them and the hockey boys that remained only barely unspoken. Elsa, however, didn't seem to care. She stood at the outer wall of the rink, still as a statue, ostensibly watching the hockey team practice. Anna gazed curiously at the back of her sister's head, at the small but neat bun wrapped at the base of her skull, and wondered what thoughts could possibly be going through the older girl's mind. Elsa was incredibly smart, Anna knew; there was never a moment her brain was not whirring busily. But for years Anna had not been privy to those marvelous thoughts and theories, those fanciful daydreams and ideas.

_When do I get my sister back? _Anna used to ask her parents. They never had an answer. Now that she was fifteen, maybe it was time to accept that the answer might be _never. _But if there was one thing Anna was terrible at, it was giving up.


	2. 2: In which Anna is put on edge

Anna's slippers shuffled carelessly across the creaking wooden floorboards of the straight old staircase that was rarely in use. Its incline was preposterous, made all the more treacherous by the fact that the girl attempting to conquer it was balancing a textbook in one hand, a bowl of instant noodles in the other, and a pair of heavy, sharp-bladed skates across her shoulder.

_Crrreak, _complained the staircase. It was not used to the weight of a lively young girl on its back.

The upstairs of their little house was tiny, comprised only of their late father's study and Elsa's long, narrow room with its majestic Gothic window at its end. Neither girl could bring herself to use the desk and papers of a dead man, so the room stayed cold and silent. Elsa had no visitors and left her abode only as often as she needed to physically present herself in school to stay enrolled, or to skate. Anna was not even sure how her sister ate. Sometimes she wasn't sure she had a sister at all, or whether Elsa's ghostly presence was a product of an overactive imagination spiked with loneliness. As a result, the upstairs was ghostly and coated in a fine layer of dust; it looked like a house abandoned, or a cranny of some dreary old country house where a murder mystery might take place.

Anna paused outside her sister's door. It was crafted of dark and heavy wood, and reminded the girl of a castle's impregnable drawbridge closed tight against invaders. Which would make Anna herself an invader, armed only with Cup Noodles and an introductory chemistry text. She grinned at the thought of an army laying siege to a fortress, brandishing a million iterations of her choice of weaponry.

Out from under the door floated faint mumblings, electronically distorted voices speaking such that Anna could not understand what they said.

She sighed. "Sis!" cried the younger girl, rapping on the door. There was no response, not that she'd expected any. Anna made an effort to "Granny Gerda said homework before K-drama!"

"I'm _doing_ homework," came Elsa's voice, quiet but brimming with irritation.

"Elsa, I can _hear_ your stupid show."

There was no response, but the noise of the video continued, if anything becoming louder.

Anna was exasperated. The only reason her elder sister got away with such erratic behavior was her stellar grades. Their grandparents viewed Elsa's abysmal attendance as a sign of a girl in the prime of youth spending her days carefree and unburdened. Whenever they came to check in on the girls, Elsa magically presented herself as the picture of a rosy-cheeked and reasonably well-adjusted, if quiet, teenager, with nothing more astray in her life than a slight obsession with books. Anna used to look forward to seeing her sister come out of her shell around their grandparents, but as she had gotten older she had begun to realize that Elsa was just putting on a show, that her stage persona dropped the moment their grandmother left the room.

Then Anna was back to living with a ghost.

"I brought you noodles," she said softly to the door, almost tenderly, teeth worrying the skin of her lower lip. Silence. If not for the quiet hum of the drama playing in the background, Anna might have begun to think that she was all alone in the house, talking to a door and slowly going insane. "Spicy chicken," she continued, more to hear her own voice than to elicit a response. "Your favorite."

The silence stretched on until Anna's knees and calves grew tired, despite their skating-sculpted fortitude. She turn her back to the door and slid down it until her bottom hit the floor with a hollow _thud, _and began with lifeless fingers opening the top of the noodle carton. There she sat, half-heartedly slurping noodle after noodle. Sometimes when Anna tried to make contact with her sister, the inevitable rebuff simply seemed a part of the difficulty of meshing in a complicated family, and Anna just went on her way. Sometimes she felt desolately alone and broke down, crying, outside Elsa's impregnable door or cocooned for safety in her own bed.

Tonight she felt nothing. Rather, not nothing, because to feel nothing would be to feel neutral, to feel in balance between happiness and sadness. But tonight Anna was not in balance between positive and negative emotion, but completely bereft of emotion at all. On her heart settled a tangible nothingness, an entity of black space, a vacuum which sucked away her energy and made her chemistry textbook seem an insurmountable challenge. The paragraphs blurred beneath her dry eyes; the words piled on top of each other and shifted around until Anna could not be sure that she was still awake. And then she wasn't.

"Winter Games in only three weeks now!" chirped Anna, bouncing with every step she took even under the combined and considerable weight of both her schoolbag and her skating bag. "We have a lot of work to do!"

"We can handle it," said Hans, wrapping one arm affectionately around his petite partner as they entered the rink. Her cheeks went even pinker, already flushed as she was with excitement.

"Of course we can!" Anna agreed. They high-fived, the resulting _smack _resounding around the high-ceilinged building. A few of the hockey boys, finishing their own practice, rolled their eyes at the eternally-peppy pair's entrance, some attempting to be covert about their disgust and others pointedly not.

"Losers," commented Anna. Hans made a noncommittal noise. She continued, under her breath, "Why can't they just get off our ice? They're supposed to leave at four."

Hans said diplomatically, "Maybe they have a big game coming up or something." But both knew he was itching to put his skates on and get out onto the ice. He had made progress in private lessons with Anders, but there was no substitute for the seamless coordination that came of practicing together.

They stood looking on, noses pressed against the outside of the Plexiglas barrier as the hockey players darted about the ice, shifting the puck from stick to stick so cleanly that it seemed as if the puck was magnetized. Once a particularly burly-looking player (though it was hard to tell what was muscle and what was padding, what with the bulk of their gear) shot the puck with so much force that it shot at the barrier like a cannonball and made contact with a loud_ bang, _not unlike a gunshot, only a few inches of translucent plastic away from Anna's body.

She flinched, clapping her hands to her face.

"It's okay, Anna," said Hans, smirking at her. "It's not going to break the wall." All the same, it took a long few minutes for her shoulders to drift away from her ears again.

"He did that on purpose," she alleged. "I'm gonna find him when he gets off the ice."

"And do what?"

Anna just glared up at her still-grinning partner, face red and fists clenched.

"He probably weighs as much as three of you," Hans counselled. "If you fight him I'll have to bring your body home to Elsa. And she'd probably _eat _me if I did that."

But his words reached deaf ears as Anna stalked off to the rink exit to find her assaulter. Her eyes scanned the faces of every gruff, hyped-up teenaged boy that passed her; some ignored her, while others gave her questioning and condescending glances.

She grabbed the shoulder of one of the scrawnier of the flock and, shaking him, demanded, "Where's Blondi?" The boy's eyes went wide and he darted away, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the rink, where the Zamboni was inching, sluglike, onto the scratched surface. Anna blinked for a moment, confused, before her gaze alighted upon the driver of the Zamboni, clad in a thick woolen scarf and matching cap. She felt her heart soften momentarily at the thought that his gear looked like his mother had made it for him. Then she remembered the fact that she should have been on the ice an hour ago, and the puck flying at her face, and threw caution to the wind, thundering out onto the ice to face the looming machine.

"It is _not nice –" _Anna bellowed, before her feet flew out from under her. The figure skater had forgotten to remove the plastic guards which protected her blades and, unfortunately, made it impossible to move across the slick surface. Her head made bodily and resounding contact with the ice, and she felt the cold begin to seep through her cheek. Her vision flickered but did not go dark, though in her embarrassment she wished it had. For a moment, all was cold and shock; then the heat and throbbing pain shot through her limbs in one sudden burst.

To her great shame and indignation, the hand dragger her up to her feet belonged to Blondi, aka Hockey Bozo, aka Zamboni Driver Extraordinaire. It lingered on her arm to steady her, and Anna threw off the helpful touch with great drama, before stumbling and clutching again for the support.

"Kristoff," said the boy.

"_Fuck _off," said Anna, shaking his hand from her shoulder again.

"Ok, then," Kristoff said. "Note taken: don't help people."

"That's right, you'd better run!" cried Anna at the boy, who was ambling away as if he were going for a new world record of slowest ten-foot walk.

"Feisty, feisty," reprimanded her skating partner, gliding easily up to stand beside her. He placed a hand on the small of her back to ensure she would not lose her balance again, and Anna found herself leaning into the touch like an attention-starved alleycat. "Why are you so ready to start a fight, little Anna?"

Anna looked up into his face and felt the aggression melt away from her like an ice cube on a hot summer's day. She found her scowl sliding off her face so completely that she could not remember why she had been upset. "Oh, Hans," she sighed, grabbing one of his gloved hands in both of hers. "I just had a really awful night. Couldn't get Elsa to open the door."

"That's – normal, though," said Hans, unsure.

"Yeah, but…just because something's normal," Anna explained. "Doesn't mean it ever stops hurting."

Hans didn't know what to say to that. So he just kept Anna's hand in his smooth leather glove, and led her to the center of the ice. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he spun her around faster and faster, ducking as her braids whipped into the air. Once she was dizzy and giggling, he brought her to a halt and let her collapse onto his chest, arms twisted like a vice around him to keep herself upright.

Once she could stand upright, Anna pulled away, no trace of upset in her bright blue-green eyes. "Okay, practice!" she announced. "Hey – Hans? How's the jumping with Anders going?"

"Good," said Hans. That could mean anything. Anna bit her lip – the last thing she wanted at this stage was Hans to start doubting his ability or scare their new coach off with his tirades. Her partner was very confident, sometimes to the point of aggression, but Anna knew that underneath his self-assuredness lay a profound sensitivity to criticism. It was one of the reasons they, as a pair, stagnated. Hans was too nice to give Anna corrections, she too intimidated to do the same.

Anders seemed like he could take some Hans-drama. But he was so young…

"Are they really?" Anna demanded. "Good, I mean? _You're _good with him? You work well together? No drama, no shouting? I mean, not that I'm saying you're a drama queen but - "

"_Yes_, Anna," he responded wearily, glancing around the nearly-empty rink as if to indicate it was about time to stop chit-chatting and start skating. "It's fine."

Anna sighed and accepted that was all she was going to get; maybe she would find a way to observe their lessons. But he wouldn't act naturally with her around. She could send a spy. Whom could she send? Maybe Elsa would do it. Who was she kidding, Elsa wouldn't even talk to her anymore, much less spy for her. What about one of the girls at school? But which…

"Earth to Anna," said a voice. A white-leathered hand noiselessly snapped its fingers in Anna's face.

Anna blinked. "Wha?"

"I was just saying," said Hans. "We should get ice cream sometime."

"It's the middle of winter," said Anna.

"I mean." Hans looked down at her, a smirk flirting with the corner of his mouth. Anna wished she had something to hold on to that wasn't him. "It doesn't have to be ice cream."

"Yeah," Anna agreed, absentmindedly. "Ice cream…"

"Anna," Hans sighed, rubbing his temple with two elegant fingers. "I'm asking you out. As in, on a date."

Her face went redder than Moscow in '17. "Oh!" she exclaimed, hands twisting and turning frantically in the pockets of her jacket. "I – that – yes! Not ice cream, maybe. I – Friday?"

Hans agreed, "Friday," looking as proud as a cat with a half-disassembled bird in its mouth.

Elsa usually showed up to the rink around six, to skate aimlessly for an hour or just sit watching children chasing each other around the ice, before driving Anna home. Except when she didn't. Which, Anna thought but could never verify, was happening more and more often. Lately it seemed like her older sister left her room only to eat and use the restroom – though apparently she did so when Anna was not around.

As she had told Hans, it never got easier. There was some steadfast, stubborn part of her that refused to accept that this was just _how things had to be. _Maybe it was foolhardy heroism, but Anna could not let go of the prickle of hope that maybe they could fix things, that inside that barricaded room survived some element of the sweet, serene older sister she had known as a child.

If only Elsa would tell her what needed fixing.

Elsa didn't show up to drive her home.

So Anna begged Hans to give her a ride, a regular occurrence that was all the more awkward after a practice made skin-crawlingly self-conscious by the arrangement made for Friday. Anna had been hyperaware of Hans's fingers digging into her hip as he lifted her into the air; she tried frantically to remember if pairs skating had always been this intimate, if he always held her so close. Hans, for his part, was careful beyond even his ordinary consideration, not daring to outpace her or lift her too high.

Anders probably would have yelled at them for being distracted and tentative. Maybe dating her partner wasn't such a dandy idea.

_We're not dating, _Anna reminded herself as Hans backed out of his parking space. She sat as close to the window as possible, thinking about the fact that she could hear herself breathing and wondering if Hans also could her breathing, which made her almost stop breathing all-together. _We're going on _a _date. One. For now._

_ So we're – going on a date. Seeing each other? No, that sounds way too grown-up. Thirty-year-olds who work in law firms "see each other". Fooling around. No, no, no, that's not it. Definitely not it._

"Are you okay?" Hans asked, managing to sound caring and dashingly nonchalant at the same time. Anna pressed her chilly hands to her cheeks to try to mitigate the pink splashed across them. "Kinda quiet, considering you're _you."_

"Am I okay? _Am _I _okay?_" she blustered, gesturing dramatically. "Are _you _okay?"

"Yeah," said Hans, grinning as if to himself; he did not look at Anna, but she knew he was as aware of her as she was of him. His teeth were very, very white. The leather interior of his car felt small and silent, and Anna fervently wished her house was closer.

Anna burst through the front door with her skates swinging wildly from one ungloved hand; one neon-green blade guard had been hastily applied and came loose, becoming a dangerous projectile and flying free, making impact with the wall forcefully enough to leave a noticeable scratch. Anna inspected it and shrugged, still grinning like an idiot, dropping her skates onto the sofa and continuing to twirl about. She dashed into the kitchen and began piling dollops of cocoa-hazelnut spread and peanut butter onto slices of bread, slamming the sandwich together and flipping it onto a plate.

"Finally!" She cried aloud, though no one was around to listen. "I actually have a chance! With a boy!"

The walls echoed her words faintly back to her.

Satiated and still cheerful, Anna cracked open a textbook and tried to make her overstimulated eyes focus on the ink. But the margins were so narrow, and the text so finely-printed! The margins were sort of like sideburns. Hans had sideburns, really voluminous, lion-like sideburns, which was unusual for a guy her age. Well, he was older. Well, he was only two years older. Was that bad? Was it okay? What was the rule for acceptable ages to date – divide by seven and add two? No, that couldn't be right. But they weren't dating anyway. But did she want them to be? Was she overthinking it? Yes, almost definitely. Was it too much drama for a skating pair –

The phone rang. Anna's head snapped around, one braid whacking her across the nose. She scrambled to pick up the receiver, accidentally slamming her heavy textbook closed on her hand at the exact same time the apparatus reached her ear: the result was a high-pitched yelp transferred into the phone.

"Oh my God, sorry!" said Anna, shaking her hand with a grimace. "I just slammed my hand in the algebra II textbook. It's a real honker." Immediately after the words left her mouth, she grimaced at the stupidity of her confession. Whoever was on the end of the line did not want to know about the algebra II textbook.

"_-Center for Academic Success at Arendelle High School-" _came the cool and calm voice of a woman who was very practiced in the art of making telephone calls.

"Oh my God, am I getting a scholarship?" Anna exclaimed, once again wringing her hand but this time with excitement. The voice droned on. _Dummy. It's an automated call._

"_-has received one or more failing grades in midterm evaluations this semester-"_

"No!" said Anna in one fast breath, in spite of the fact that no one was on the other end. "It was sticky for a moment with the titration equations and everything but I swear to God I passed that chem test!"

"_Would the parents or guardians of **Elsa Christiensen **please call CAS at…" _Her sister's name stood out from the rest of the recording because it was pronounced – in fact, astoundingly mispronounced – by a computerized phonetics system rather than a real person.

"Ha," said Anna, still on the line. "Eeelsa. I'm going to start calling her that."

The call ended and she sat for a moment, still cradling the receiver, numbed by the happy buzz of chocolate and being asked out and not failing chem. Quietly, she fluttered her feet against the couch, rejoicing in the quiet of the house, which for a moment felt peaceful rather than desolate. Then the information she had just received sunk in, and Anna's face soured.

"She is _so _grounded," said Anna, throwing her textbook to the ground for emphasis. It bounced on its corner and struck her big toe, sending her screeching and hopping across the floor to retrieve a bag of frozen peas from the freezer.


End file.
